Calm Birth: Empowering Preparation for Childbirth

Book Description

Calm Birth is a safe, noninvasive, and drug-free childbirth method, based on meditation and mind/body medicine, which has been used in hospitals for more than 10 years. Supported by many highly respected childbirth specialists, including Jeannine Parvati Baker, Ina May Gaskin, and Ruth L. Miller, it encourages natural childbirth, but is effective even when medical interventions are necessary, as it helps heal the side effects of medications and invasive procedures. The three narrations on this CD guide mothers-to-be and new mothers through the main relaxation and meditation practices detailed in the author’s book Calm Birth: A New Method for Conscious Childbirth — the practice of opening, womb breathing, and giving and receiving. An empowering alternative to the “medicalization of birth," the techniques allow women to channel their innate wisdom, ability, and energy, making the birth experience a truly blessed event.

1. Practice of Opening 22:15 minutes
2. Womb Breathing 22:12 minutes
3. Giving and Receiving 12:21 minutes

Calm Birth is a program of Medigrace, a nonprofit corporation.
www.CalmBirth.org

Customer Reviews:

good methods, but not an easy read..........2007-04-30

I have been reading many books on natural childbirth methods, and the common thread is to not fear pain and breathe deep slow breaths(no panting), and visualizations. This book's methods are based heavily on Buddhist meditation with some references to physics and natural energy fields of the body. Yes, I did say physics in a pregnancy book. The author writes this book like a published research paper and it can be VERY hard to read. For much of the book the author keeps throwing out different names and citing their research and tries to back up the methods up a little too much. It can be a bit overwhelming for a tired pregnant woman, especially if it overwhelms me now just doing research before I get pregnant with child number two. The actual methods, (there are three) are confined to a much shorter part of the book, and I can see where the CD might be all you need if you have done much research. There is a small jab a Christianity and it's ties with the downfall of women as healers in the beginning, so a sensitive religious reader may be offended. This book does not go into the biological process of birth to let you know exactly what is happening with your body. I feel that knowledge of childbirth is part of the empowerment to give birth naturally and should have been included. At the very end it gives childbirth stories, but is written in interview form and that too can be hard to read.
Overall, if this was the only book you read I think you would be able to have a successful childbirth. BUT I recommend you read some other books first: Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan is my favorite. HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method: A natural approach to a safe, easier, more comfortable birthing (3rd Edition) It made me feel so empowered. Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way is very good too, but is a little negative and very outdated. Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way: Revised Edition

Calm Birth: Empowering Preparation for Childbirth

Average customer rating:

Calm Birth: Empowering Preparation for Childbirth
Robert Newman
Manufacturer: North Atlantic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N6BO8S

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Di Giovanni makes the Balkan madness all too visible...

A. Donn

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War
Janine Di Giovanni
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books
20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0375724559
Release Date: 2005-02-08

Book Description

As a senior foreign correspondent for The Times of London, Janine di Giovanni was a firsthand witness to the brutal and protracted break-up of Yugoslavia. With unflinching sensitivity, Madness Visible follows the arc of the wars in the Balkans through the experience of those caught up in them: soldiers numbed by the atrocities they commit, women driven to despair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (di Giovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin, babies murdered in hate-induced rage.

Di Giovanni’s searing memoir examines the turmoil of the Balkans in acute detail, and uncovers the motives of the leaders who created hell on earth; it raises challenging questions about ethnic conflict and the responsibilities of foreign governments in times of mass murder. Perceptive and compelling, this unique work of reportage from the physical and psychological front lines makes the madness of war wholly visible.

Customer Reviews:

Di Giovanni makes the Balkan madness all too visible..........2006-05-19

...for us, her readership, that is.

What strikes me most about this superbly-told memoir is the visceral reality with which author Di Giovanni succeeds in recollecting her experiences of the period and place with razor-sharp detail. Even more shocking once I'd learned (towards the end of Madness Visible) that she'd absconded alone to Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, of all locales to compile her notes and pen this book. For *that* alone, I think she deserves heapful praise; all the moreso in that the bombs began to fall in the Ivoreans own civil conflict at the time of her sojourn there. Yikes...

Curious about this particular work is that Janine chooses to commence her account of the bloody Balkan decade with the NATO bombings of Kosovo in 1999. After a suitable reflection on the read, I have yet to figure out why that was the case...almost like we were going back in time with her -- or the experience which had a lesser impact upon her was delivered first.

Theories all. Curiosity, it was. Merely curiosities.

A frightening element which shines resoundingly through is the war correspondent's mythic love for the field of battle, almost as if the daily rush of adrenaline which war reporters mainline from conflict zones around the globe is like the elixir of their lives, their consummate vice in a manner of speaking.

I've heard about this several times before, by reading other sources and listening to speeches given my those who've passed thorugh bloody battlefield hells, and am fully cognizant of the phenomenon. Di Giovanni makes no bones about the ravages of it, and is forthright with her admission that "it was only possible to love one war," quoting the immortal words of Spanish Civil War correspondent Martha Gellhorn. That's a statement, if I've ever heard one before.

As I flipped through page after captivating page, my mind drifted back to thoughts of the year 1984, the Winter Olympics in the Bosnian capital, and how only a decade (or less) previous, the world banded together on those same majestic slopes surrounding Sarajevo (in Pale, for instance) in an act of peace, harmony, and amateur sport.

Positively nightmarish it might have been for some of the athletes to have returned to witness the aftermath of the carnage.

A stray thought which came to mind as I pondered the read.

Di Giovanni is a very talented scribe with a flair for narrative. I hope to read more of her stuff in other places, and I will certainly be keeping an eye out for her.

Kudos on the tip for the Richard Holbrooke book. I've already added it to my library.

A. Donn.......2005-10-09

Madness Visible is a powerful and extremely moving account of war. It reads like a novel, but its not and this is also why it's so harrowing. So much is contained in a sentence, on a page (action, danger , fear , sorrow) that sometimes you feel compelled to put it down and re-read the passage over, just to be able to take it all in. Janine di giovanni is able to give us unobstructed access to the frontline of war.Is it possible that human beings in our world should continue to be subjected to so much madness and suffering?

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.......2005-10-07

Perhaps the most bizarre incident recounted in Janine di Giovanni's tales of war comes at a time of peace. She is in Sarajevo, six years after the end of the war, and a radio station in Cape Town wants to interview her about a piece she has written for her newspaper, the Times. To her horror the interviewer asks her about snipers and aid convoys, as though the Bosnian war was still in full swing. The fact that it had ended had simply passed the South African by. "It was my obsession," she writes, but not that of others.

So this is a book about di Giovanni's obsession. The Yugoslav wars, or at least the Bosnian and Kosovo chapters of it. This is compelling reportage at its best. Grisly and depressing at times, of course, but also most revealing too. As reporting wars and how to do it, becomes, in the wake of Iraq, ever more a subject of discussion, di Giovanni is brave to admit that she for one does not believe in objectivity.

Discussing the siege of Sarajevo which lasted from 1992 to 1995, she writes: "We were guilty, we knew, of perhaps only covering one side of the war, but for us there was only one side: the side that was getting pounded, that was being strangled slowly, turning blue and purple." That side was the Bosnian Muslim side, and those Serbs who always said that they were "demonised" by the international media will see vindication in these words. After all, they will point out, Alija Izetbegovic, the then leader of the Bosnian Muslims was being investigated for war crimes by The Hague war crimes tribunal when he died in 2003 di Giovanni does not talk of Muslim crimes. But, as she says, "the truth wasn't necessarily objective; it was where we were sitting, what we were seeing." And she was seeing civilians cut down by Serbian snipers and old people literally freezing to death in a nursing home.

The book begins with the Kosovo war in 1999, moves on to Milosevic's Serbia in the months afterwards and then flashes back to the Bosnia of the early 1990s. There are telling chapters exploring the minds of two key Bosnian Serb leaders, the Shakespearean scholar Nikola Koljevic, who made his own tragedy before killing himself, and Biljana Plavsic who, racked by remorse, unusually pleaded guilty to war crimes at The Hague.

Di Giovanni recalls that the doyenne of a previous generation of war reporters, Martha Gellhorn, once said, referring to the Spanish Civil War, that "it was only possible to love one war" and the rest became duty. Di Giovanni would have us believe that Yugoslavia was her greatest love and that Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Iraq and the all the other places she has reported on were duty. In fact, reading between the lines, the true love seems to have been Sarajevo and Bosnia. If so, then even Kosovo was duty - but she does write about it well. A good book and a great read.

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.......2005-10-04

Di Giovanni shows war from a deeply personal perspective; there are few books that bring the horror so vividly to life. The most harrowing stories in this book are particularly devastating to me as a German reader: it seems there were few lessons learnt from WW2, and no end to the atrocities human beings can inflict on each other. Di Giovanni deals sensitively with a difficult subject matter, and illuminates its historical context brilliantly.

Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.......2005-10-04

An unflinching and gripping portrayal of the Balkan War, Janine di Giovanni's book shows us just how quickly normality can descend into madness, propeling a civilised society into brutal mayhem. One becomes so engrossed in this book, listening to the victims as they lay their stories bare, it is easy to forget that di Giovanni herself was on the front line, narrowly escaping death a few times. The stories she tells are unforgettable (the rape victims, Koljevic, the Shakespeare scholar who became Milosevic's puppet, Biljana Plavsic, the Iron Lady of the Balkans) the images she conjures powerful and haunting.
A must read.

Amazon.com

Unfortunately for debunkers like the Amazing Randi, the distinction between science and pseudoscience can get a bit fuzzy. Biophysicist Walter Gratzer pokes gently through the mulch of dead ideas in The Undergrowth of Science, a smart, witty collection of cautionary research tales. Some are widely familiar, like his long chapter on the Soviet politicization of genetics, while others have been examined less minutely--does anyone remember the horror of menstrual toxins? Gratzer treats his subjects warmly, for the most part, while reserving some venom for the foolishness and evil of Nazi eugenics and other racist and nationalist visions of the world.

The book asks its readers to adopt a sophisticated skepticism, one that won't accept polywater or memory transfer with zeal but also won't rigorously reject continental drift or other crazy-but-correct ideas. Of course, Gratzer acknowledges that it's easiest to be skeptical with perfect hindsight, but by building on Langmuir's rules for recognizing "pathological science," he hopes to establish a more thoughtful scientific readership. While some scientists would just as soon see any reference to travesties like cold fusion go down the memory hole, The Undergrowth of Science reminds us to learn from our mistakes. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

We think of scientists as sober, precise thinkers, but they can be wildly off the mark. Consider cold fusion, N-rays, or polywater--three "discoveries" that turned out to be complete nonsense. But serious scientists somehow convinced themselves that they were real.
In The Undergrowth of Science, Walter Gratzer recounts the blind alleys that honest, dedicated researchers have wandered down--and had to be dragged out of by more cool-headed colleagues. Self-deception runs through each of Gratzer's many examples, a distressing if sometimes hilarious theme. We
meet the American researchers who convinced themselves that memories were captured in RNA molecules; if extracts from the brains of trained rats were injected into the untrained, they argued, the knowledge was passed along. Gratzer also describes the group of serious scientists took up the cause of
Uri Geller and assorted 11-year-old children who claimed to have the power to bend spoons with their minds--but only if the observers wanted them to succeed. When less biased researchers saw the children slyly bending the cutlery with their feet, their scientific defenders voiced outrage at the
unfairness of the test. Politics sometimes plays a role as well, as it did when the U.S. government spent millions looking into the strange and miraculous Soviet invention of polywater. It turned out to be normal water contaminated with silicates.
Gratzer guides us through the rogue's gallery of false discoveries, from mitogenic radiation to the recent (and infamous) cold fusion. Informative and entertaining, yet with a serious point to make, this book offers much insight into why good science sometimes goes bad.

Customer Reviews:

Worthwhile for those interested in history of science.......2002-12-11

Gratzer tells a bunch of stories of "scientists gone wrong". I found the most interesting stories in the first half of the book. These stories of scientists who so strongly believe the theories that their experiments can't help but achieve the desired results. These misguided scientists explain away conflicting results with the apparently sincere explanation that unless you want to see the results you won't be able to. The second half of the book gets more into how politics can impact science, specifically looking at Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. The book can be a little slow in points, but a worthwhile read for all who are interested in science to remind us of the importance of skepticism.

Research off the rails..........2001-06-03

The topic of Gratzer's book is largely confined to what physicist Irving Langmuir properly called "pathological science." In such instances, a scientist supposedly quite capable of doing valid research produces an incredible farrago of nonsensical garbage, usually being seduced into total self-deception by arrogance, political or religious considerations, national pride, or other influences totally irrelevant and completely destructive to the search for truth.

With so many topics covered, I think the most useful review is just an outline of what is covered. Chapter 1 covers the most classic instance of pathological science, Blondlot's discovery of "N-Radiation." Chapter 2 discusses many crazy (and wrong) ideas from biology, including radiation emitted by cells, cannibal learning in flatworms, and the like. Chapter 3 covers the Davis-Barnes and Allison effects investigated and exploded by Langmuir. Chapter 4 tells the sad tale of polywater. Chapter 5 is a very unfocussed discussion largely dealing with pseudoscience rather than pathological science--- beginning with Mesmer it winds up with spoonbending children in the labs of British physicists Taylor and Hasted. Chapter 6 deals with cold fusion, Chapter 7 with various idiocies and surgical fads of medicine--- hardly pathological science, since science only began to penetrate medicine during and after WWII, but certainly pathological.

Chapter 8 deals mainly with the delusion that scientists in different countries do science differently--- one's own country, of course, is the only one that does it right. Chapter 9 covers the horrifying destruction, first of genetics and then of biology itself, in Stalinist Russia. Chapter 10 is concerned with "race hygiene" and similar perversions of anthropology and human biology, before and during the reign of Hitler, including the Nazi adoption of a crackpot theory of cosmology, the Welteislehre. This long chapter then turns to the persecution of Jewish physicists and mathematicians, and specifically (non-Jewish) physicist Werner Heisenberg. The most frightening account in this chapter, for me, was a description of the way some established scientists who had cooperated fully and enthusiastically with such persecutions, were instantly readmitted to German scientific society immediately after the war, no matter how red their hands or how black their hearts. Chapter 11 deals with "eugenics" and various other fatally oversimplified proposals to breed superior humans.

One can see that the book covers a very mixed bag of examples, not many of which are pure instances of pathological science in the Langmuir sense. Homeopathy, for example, is really a kind of "healing religion," having no origins within or support from science, although it did generate some pathological science in the 1980s in France. I found few obvious mistakes, but mistakes are inevitable in a book covering such a wide range of topics. There are some real lulus on page 103--- Puthoff and Targ have not been at SRI nor have they generated characteristically fawed ESP claims for more than 2 decades, and Martin Gardner did not found THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

I was familiar with almost everything discussed in the book, so I didn't learn a great deal that was new to me, but I did find it useful to have all these accounts in a single volume. It is one of the great strengths of science that episodes of pathology in the Langmuir sense are in almost every case extremely brief, and never affect the overall course of scientific research. But the public confusion that such episodes generate can do great damage to science. And where pathological science or pseudoscience is take up by a political system, as in Utah, or Nazi Germany or Russia, the results can essentially destroy a whole generation of scientists.

Science Mutated.......2001-02-03

We expect that science will uncover truths about nature, and that scientists will be well trained in observing, recording, and analyzing data with objectivity. Anyone who regards scientific progress over the centuries, and especially in the past century, will find that such expectations are generally met. And yet scientists are human, with all the weaknesses humans are prone to. _The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception, and Human Frailty_ (Oxford University Press) by Walter Gratzer demonstrates instances where scientists can be susceptible to wishful thinking, patriotic coercion, and self deception. Interestingly, the book does not dwell on cases of fraud; the scientists in the episodes described generally aren't trying to fool anyone, but manage to do so only after fooling themselves.

The guiding spirit of this book is Irving Langmuir, a scientist who won a Nobel for his work on surfaces, but who brashly (and offensively to some) pushed his way into the research areas of other scientists. When he wasn't in the lab, he liked to pursue what he called "pathological science." He never wrote about this hobby, and only a transcript of a lecture he gave in 1953 remains, but Langmuir's Rules for spotting pathological science show up all over this book. The rules specify, among other things, that in pathological science, experimental results are very close to the limit of detectability (hardly noticeable, or noticeable at a very low statistical significance); there are claims of great accuracy; explanations are fantastic and contrary to experience; and any criticism of the "science" is met with excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.

What has happened to these scientists? Gratzer explains: "The germ of a pathological episode is usually an innocent mistake or an experimental mirage; the perpetrator is persuaded that he has made a great discovery, which will bring him fame and advancement in his profession. Once committed it is difficult to go back and to allow the principles of caution and skepticism that training and experience normally inculcate to overcome the excitement and euphoria of a brilliant success." Among the stories Gratzer covers are N-Rays, polywater, Lysenkoism, the foolish Nazi science of superstition, cold fusion, and more. These stories have all been told before, but it is useful to have them collected here. Gratzer writes for _Nature_ and has a clear style even when the physics gets a little intimidating. The lessons from the collected events should increase our admiration for how well science usually works, but should also remind us that there will always be fringe scientists. It is impossible to tell when the next cold fusion embarrassment will occur, but I hope we will be able to count on mainstream science to counter claims that HIV does not cause AIDS, that the world is less than 10,000 years old, or that people are being regularly abducted by aliens.

Book Description

When William Shockley invented the transistor, the world was changed forever and he was awarded the Nobel Prize. But today Shockley is often remembered only for his incendiary campaigning about race, intelligence, and genetics. His dubious research led him to donate to the Nobel Prize sperm bank and preach his inflammatory ideas widely, making shocking pronouncements on the uselessness of remedial education and the sterilization of individuals with IQs below 100. Ultimately his crusade destroyed his reputation and saw him vilified on national television, yet he died proclaiming his work on race as his greatest accomplishment. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joel N. Shurkin offers the first biography of this contradictory and controversial man. With unique access to the private Shockley archives, Shurkin gives an unflinching account of how such promise ended in such ignominy.

Customer Reviews:

difficult to put down once you pick this up.... .......2007-09-16

Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age

Compliment to the writer who made the life of William Shockley so much more interesting than it really was. Shockley's inventions in technology is profound however, Shockley's life is really not that interesting. In essence, Shockley was a smart man, went to top schools, recruited by top people and top corporations, invented a lot to help our country (during the wars) and invented a lot to help the world (especially in his transistor and silicon invention), married twice, made some babies, toward the later part of his life, he got into study of genes and racial profiling in IQ and then he died at 80. If you are curios about what Shockley's inventions were, you would be fascinated by this documentation and litany of items listed. If you want to know the history of IQ controversy or whether blacks' IQ are truly inferior to whites, you will see lurid details on this. However, if you are like me, reading this book looking for fascinating human stories (ala Huge Hefner of the Playboy enterprise or Rupert Murdoch of the News Corps or even Mao Tze Tung of Communist China), you may be disappointed. In reality, Shockley lived a typical American suburbia life (the most exciting part of his life may be going to Norway to obtain his Nobel). You don't see him hanging out at the Playboy mansion at 70s with the hottest super models like Huge Hefner or flying to China to close a major media deal like Rupert Murdoch. Shockley's life was boring. May be he had bad relations with his kids (but then who does not?) and he was also not good at being nice in dealing with people but most engineers are like that, nothing new here. So, full credit to the writer who successfully made William Shockley's life so much more interesting than it really was - by applying an approach of story telling to add context and flavor - for example, in the story of his first company and the departure of the 11 original scientists Shockley hired, the writer discussed how Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore left and started their own company. This made the whole story more interesting. Now we know Gordon Moore was rated by Shockley's IQ tests as "not a good manager". Making dull topic interesting, one win for the author.

Five Stars to the author for making a dull topic interesting.
Three Stars to the content (the life of William Shockley - boring stuff). A reminder that we should go out and truly have fun in life. Go to a night club, fool around with some girls, go to a foreign country and do some bumgy jumping. Don't live life like Shockley.

Very bright, and more than a little strange.......2007-05-15

William Shockley generated some mild controversy as a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for the transistor, and a firestorm of controversy as an investigator of supposed linkages between race and intelligence. Mr. Shurkin sheds considerable light on both disputes, as well as on those facets of Shockley's personality which occasionally drifted from merely difficult into the scarier modes of overbearing and compulsive. The author's own attitude toward his subject leans, quite understandably, toward an uneasy blend of admiration and exasperation.

The transistor Nobel was awarded in 1954 to Shockley and his Bell Labs colleagues John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. A problematic aspect of the choice to honor all three was that although Shockley nominally led the research group, his direct involvement in the original (point contact) transistor invention was minimal. He did, however, have a legitimate conceptual claim to the later junction-type device, which became the practical transistor we know today. Shurkin's description of the contentious priority issues involved, and the human interactions among the principals, is fascinating.

One might say it's ironically fitting that a self-assured, iconoclastic, socially tone-deaf character like Shockley would blunder into the potential minefield of race/intelligence studies. On top of that, he chose the most politically radioactive combination possible -- white vs. black. The spectrum of opinion on that topic was (and is) bracketed at one end by bigots who just knew there must be an intelligence gap, and at the other end by knee-jerk egalitarians who just knew there couldn't possibly be one. The bigots embarrassed Shockley with unwanted support, and the egalitarians excoriated him for even looking at the question. The most recent and reasonable consensus seems to be that racial differences, genomically speaking, are too trivial to account for intelligence variations beyond the normal and expected spread due to both intra- and interracial gene mixing.

The biography is well-written and consistently interesting, but there are too many glitches to ignore. For example, "Schrodinger's atoms" on page 25 should be electrons, and the claim that Shockley wrote "the first textbook of the electronic age" (p.122) sounds preposterous to anyone who remembers vacuum tubes. Perhaps the author meant solid-state electronic age. For a similar reason, the book's subtitle needs revision. On page 105, the translation of 0.04 centimeter to 0.16 inch is too high by a factor of 10. The name of the strength program a youthful Shockley modeled for is spelled "Trelor" three times on page 18, but the ad reproduced on the same page conspicuously says "Treloar."

Pleasant and quick read.......2007-01-03

I am an engineer with particular interest in William Shockley because I was once barred from hearing him speak. This book presents an excellent recap of Shockley's entire life, concluding with the events that led to his downfall among the general public. I found the coverage to be generally fair and unbiased. Although the book provides the expected analysis of Shockley's later years, ample coverage is provided of his most productive years which, even under close scrutiny, show him to have indeed been a genius in several technical fields.

wow...what an amazing story!.......2006-11-02

Shockley worked at Bell Labs for many years. I, too, worked there and had no idea why we did what we did, why we had the philosophies we did, etc... Almost 35 years later, I still saw the footprints of Shockley's world. That, to me, was very interesting. His life was extraordinary and a huge lesson in something. I'm not sure what that something is yet but after this all soaks in, maybe I can make heads or tails of it. It was all so strange. A brilliant mind is all so strange and the author did such a superb job of letting us into the secret. Thanks Joel!

Vindicated genius.......2006-08-29

Joel Shurkin has done a reasonably good job in this book, and it is well worth reading if you have an interest in the history of technology and the forces that shape our times. Shockley was a very important player in the development of the transistor at Bell Labs, and his story has a lot to inform the reader about how scientists in an industrial laboratory work together in a situation that demands cooperation to get to the objective, and the competitive personalities that are found in people who excel. The story is usually told in a very oversimplified version like this: "Bardeen and Brattain invented the transistor and their boss, Shockley took the credit. He later went off the deep end into eugenics and racism." Shurkin shows that there was a whole lot more to the story and presents a much more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of this complicated man.

Apportioning credit in a group effort in an industrial setting is difficult and can be contentious even despite the best intentions of all concerned. Documentation is sketchy, memories often fail, lawyers are involved, and management has its own axes to grind. I've seen all this at first-hand in a large industrial laboratory, and have participated in endless lunchtime conversations on the twists and turns the patent process takes. Sometimes hard feelings in supposedly mature scientists sour relationships and even sever productive friendships. Bruising, but inevitable, in a way...

Shockley actually had three major phases in his working life as a scientist. In the first, he was an important and productive worker in the then new field of operations research applied to warfare in WWII. He led groups of men who studied the available data involved in the battle of the Atlantic, drew conclusions, and managed to get the military to take them seriously enough that they had a real impact on the outcome. Later in the war, he worked with the air-force to devise a practical training program for B-29 crews, and was awarded the Medal of Merit for it. Throughout the rest of his life he was a consultant to the armed services and the government on scientific matters. Shurkin tells the largely forgotten story of Shockley's independent invention of the nuclear reactor and the fission bomb. Amazing stuff.

Shockley then returned to Bell Labs as a group head of seven men who were assigned to apply the recent developments of quantum mechanics to the physics of solid state semiconductors. Shurkin maintains that Shockley, probably rightly, wanted to be included in the patent for the point-contact transistor, contrary to the popular myth. And it was Shockley who continued to work in bringing the junction transistor to life for many years afterwards, while Bardeen and Brattain went on to other things within the year. Shockley really understood the importance of the invention, and wrote the seminal book on the science of electrons and holes in semiconductors.

In his later years, after he left the field, he became interested in the genetics of intelligence, race and IQ, eugenics and dysgenics. He was much before his time on all of this, but in the following decades he has been largely vindicated, at least among those who actually know something about it. This part is a sad tale of a courageous man, living in difficult times, where truth-saying is hardly rewarded.

I was disappointed though, that Shurkin does not include a bibliography of Shockley's scientific papers, nor of his many patents. Nor is there enough about the science itself to suit me, but nevertheless I found the book to be rewarding and entertaining to boot. The pictures added a lot to the book. And I was comforted to realize in the end how inappropriate the title really is.

Wired.(Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age)(Book review): An article from: The Humanist

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Wired.(Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age)(Book review): An article from: The Humanist
Howard Schneider
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from The Humanist, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1579 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Wired.(Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age)(Book review)
Author: Howard Schneider
Publication: The Humanist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 66 Issue: 5 Page: 39(2)

Article Type: Book review

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